Made in China: Swallowing One's Pride

Thursday, Jul. 05, 2001 By HANNAH BEECH

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Thursday, July 5, 2001

On July 1, China celebrated the 80th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party. In order to mark this momentous occasion, President Jiang Zemin togged himself up in a snazzy suit and announced that for the first time ever private businessmen could become members of the party. (There are already many private businessmen who are members, but they joined the party before their capitalist ventures took off.)

Jiang is the same guy who once vehemently swore off private businessmen for inclusion in the party, partly for their support of those pesky Tiananmen Square protesters back in 1989. So why the about-face? For one thing, it is the private businessmen who are saving China's economy. Most of the nation's massive, state-owned ventures were profitable, well, never. It is the least Jiang could do to acknowledge the crucial role its capitalist folk are doing to put the glitter in Beijing and Shanghai's skylines.

And now that Jiang has accommodated his capitalist foes into the fold, he should swallow his last bit of pride and finally invite his most dreaded foe into his fun-loving party: members of Falun Gong. O.K., so these kooky folks gathered en masse in front of Zhongnanhai, the cloistered leadership compound in Beijing, scaring the living daylights out of the geriatric powers-that-be inside. But just imagine if the Communist Party borrowed a little from Falun Gong ideology and combined it with its current practices. Instead of worrying about whether laid-off workers were storming the streets, Beijing's cadres would know that its millions of unemployed citizens were gathered peacefully in a leafy park, practicing their slow-motion exercises. Most of them would be too busy trying to figure out exactly how that mysterious wheel in their stomach was turning to question the corruption that pervades all ranks of the Chinese Communist Party.

And finally, there's the issue of encouraging gullibility. After all, if Falun Gong acolytes are willing to trust in such a peculiar and secretive figure as Li Hongzhi, they'll certainly have no problem looking up to the peculiar and secretive leaders in Zhongnanhai.

Such an all-embracing tactic by President Jiang isn't so hard to imagine. After all, who but the ingenious Chinese Communist Party would have thought of mixing capitalism with communist thought and calling it "socialism with Chinese characteristics?"